As mathematician George Box said, "All models are wrong, some are useful." We have set out to construct a framework for pricing bitcoin but it is important to understand the variables. From our thinking, it seems possible that bitcoin could eventually increase in price by orders of magnitude, but it all depends on bitcoin's level of adoption. The most important question is "Will people use bitcoin?"

As the first cryptocurrency, Bitcoin’s long price history should come as no surprise. Bitcoin was created in 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto, an alias for a person or group who has still not been revealed. Over the years, it has hit many highs and lows, To better understand the past of this cryptocurrency, as well as its potential in the future, take a deeper delve into its history.

On 18 March 2013, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (or FinCEN), a bureau of the United States Department of the Treasury, issued a report regarding centralized and decentralized "virtual currencies" and their legal status within "money services business" (MSB) and Bank Secrecy Act regulations.[61][66] It classified digital currencies and other digital payment systems such as bitcoin as "virtual currencies" because they are not legal tender under any sovereign jurisdiction. FinCEN cleared American users of bitcoin of legal obligations[66] by saying, "A user of virtual currency is not an MSB under FinCEN's regulations and therefore is not subject to MSB registration, reporting, and recordkeeping regulations." However, it held that American entities who generate "virtual currency" such as bitcoins are money transmitters or MSBs if they sell their generated currency for national currency: "...a person that creates units of convertible virtual currency and sells those units to another person for real currency or its equivalent is engaged in transmission to another location and is a money transmitter." This specifically extends to "miners" of the bitcoin currency who may have to register as MSBs and abide by the legal requirements of being a money transmitter if they sell their generated bitcoins for national currency and are within the United States.[59] Since FinCEN issued this guidance, dozens of virtual currency exchangers and administrators have registered with FinCEN, and FinCEN is receiving an increasing number of suspicious activity reports (SARs) from these entities.[175] Stefan Thomas, a Swiss coder and active community member, graphed the time stamps for each of Nakamoto's 500-plus bitcoin forum posts; the resulting chart showed a steep decline to almost no posts between the hours of 5 a.m. and 11 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time. Because this pattern held true even on Saturdays and Sundays, it suggested that Nakamoto was asleep at this time, and the hours of 5 a.m. to 11 a.m. GMT are midnight to 6 a.m. Eastern Standard Time (North American Eastern Standard Time). Other clues suggested that Nakamoto was British: A newspaper headline he had encoded in the genesis block came from the UK-published newspaper The Times, and both his forum posts and his comments in the bitcoin source code used British English spellings, such as "optimise" and "colour".[12] Exchange hacks. As stated above, an exchange hack has nothing to do with the integrity of the Bitcoin system… but the market freaks out regardless. This trend seems to minimize as users see that cryptos recover from exchange hacks. As exchanges evolve and become more secure, this threat becomes less of an issue. Additionally, outside investments funneling into exchanges are providing the capital for them to grow stronger.
The overwhelming majority of bitcoin transactions take place on a cryptocurrency exchange, rather than being used in transactions with merchants.[133] Delays processing payments through the blockchain of about ten minutes make bitcoin use very difficult in a retail setting. Prices are not usually quoted in units of bitcoin and many trades involve one, or sometimes two, conversions into conventional currencies.[30] Merchants that do accept bitcoin payments may use payment service providers to perform the conversions.[134]

Bitcoin mining is the process through which bitcoins are released to come into circulation. Basically, it involves solving a computationally difficult puzzle to discover a new block, which is added to the blockchain, and receiving a reward in the form of few bitcoins. The block reward was 50 new bitcoins in 2009; it decreases every four years. As more and more bitcoins are created, the difficulty of the mining process – that is, the amount of computing power involved – increases. The mining difficulty began at 1.0 with Bitcoin's debut back in 2009; at the end of the year, it was only 1.18. As of April 2017, the mining difficulty is over 4.24 billion. Once, an ordinary desktop computer sufficed for the mining process; now, to combat the difficulty level, miners must use faster hardware like Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASIC), more advanced processing units like Graphic Processing Units (GPUs), etc.

Volatility. This very reason many speculators are attracted to Bitcoin is the same reason many potential users are hesitant to get involved. Users that look at Bitcoin as a speculative investment option are essentially gambling on the process, and the future price of Bitcoin is largely unknown. There are estimates that Bitcoin will both be worth pennies in a few years, while some predict that a single bitcoin will be worth $500k in three years. As new investors continue to invest and the market cap grows, Bitcoin’s price could become more stable. However, the price struggled to move above the $6,300 resistance. More importantly, there was no test of the 50% Fib retracement level of the recent drop from the $6,433 high to $6,202 low. At the moment, there is a major bearish flag forming with resistance at $6,310 on the hourly chart of the BTC/USD pair. If the pair fails to stay above the flag support at $6,255, there could be a fresh decline towards the $6,202 low. If sellers remain in action, the price may even break the $6,202 low and trade towards the $6,150 level. On the flip side, a proper break above the flag resistance could push the price towards the $6,350 resistance and the 100 hourly SMA.
If fewer people begin to accept Bitcoin as a currency, these digital units may lose value and could become worthless. There is already plenty of competition, and though Bitcoin has a huge lead over the other 100-odd digital currencies that have sprung up, thanks to its brand recognition and venture capital money, a technological break-through in the form of a better virtual coin is always a threat.
Bitcoin's blockchain can be loaded with arbitrary data. In 2018 researchers from RWTH Aachen University and Goethe University identified 1,600 files added to the blockchain, 59 of which included links to unlawful images of child exploitation, politically sensitive content, or privacy violations. "Our analysis shows that certain content, eg, illegal pornography, can render the mere possession of a blockchain illegal."[229] In the early days, Nakamoto is estimated to have mined 1 million bitcoins.[23] Before disappearing from any involvement in bitcoin, Nakamoto in a sense handed over the reins to developer Gavin Andresen, who then became the bitcoin lead developer at the Bitcoin Foundation, the 'anarchic' bitcoin community's closest thing to an official public face.[24] Bitcoin is a digital currency created in 2009. It follows the ideas set out in a white paper by the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto, whose true identity has yet to be verified. Bitcoin offers the promise of lower transaction fees than traditional online payment mechanisms and is operated by a decentralized authority, unlike government-issued currencies. It's impossible to say how much bitcoin has increased in price single its earliest incarnation, because its value back then was in the fractions of cents. A conservative estimate, based on bitcoin's current price being around $6,300 per coin, and its early price being less than $0.01, would see bitcoin's value increasing more than 1 million fold in the last decade.

The first wallet program, simply named Bitcoin, and sometimes referred to as the Satoshi client, was released in 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto as open-source code.[10] In version 0.5 the client moved from the wxWidgets user interface toolkit to Qt, and the whole bundle was referred to as Bitcoin-Qt.[99] After the release of version 0.9, the software bundle was renamed Bitcoin Core to distinguish itself from the underlying network.[100][101]

That crash was made up for by a rally in October and November of that year. By early October, Bitcoin was at about $100, and it hit $195 by the end of the month. In November alone, Bitcoin had an unbelievable rally, going from $200 to more than $1,120. The causes of this rally were fairly obvious to most people, as more miners and exchanges were supporting Bitcoin. In addition, China had entered the marketplace.

That crash was made up for by a rally in October and November of that year. By early October, Bitcoin was at about $100, and it hit $195 by the end of the month. In November alone, Bitcoin had an unbelievable rally, going from $200 to more than $1,120. The causes of this rally were fairly obvious to most people, as more miners and exchanges were supporting Bitcoin. In addition, China had entered the marketplace. The use of bitcoin by criminals has attracted the attention of financial regulators, legislative bodies, law enforcement, and the media.[220] In the United States, the FBI prepared an intelligence assessment,[221] the SEC issued a pointed warning about investment schemes using virtual currencies,[220] and the U.S. Senate held a hearing on virtual currencies in November 2013.[222] The U.S. government claimed that bitcoin was used to facilitate payments related to Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.[223]